"There will be no physical barriers"
Despite the denials, 114 UK councils are planning a 15 minute city. Called a myriad of other names, and claimed to be for a host of reasons, you will be penned-in to one of 5 or 6 zones by geofencing technology.
"There will be no physical barriers" Councillor Duncan Enright.
One of the first councils planning a 15 minute city is Oxfordshire County Council in the UK. The Councillors were quick to deny that six traffic filters scheduled for 2024 were anything more than a calming measure, with the head of transport Duncan Enright now famously stating "there will be no physical barriers" when attempting to deflect from their real intentions. But nobody, apart from Enright himself, had ever suggested there would be.
Enright is correct, 15 minute cities, sometimes known as SMART cities, won't use 'physical barriers' to keep their residents in their designated zone, nothing nearly so crude. They will use 'virtual barriers' in the form of technology called geofencing. This is made possible by 5G technology, your mobile phone, ANPR cameras and even facial recognition software. You will be penned-in to your own neighbourhood by this technology, completely eliminating the need for physical barriers, gates, planters or any other such apparatus. Physical barriers are so last century.
A geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area such as the 15 minute neighbourhood of a SMART city. Geofencing is easy to set up too: your mobile phone already records your location (even if you switch it off) and authorities now have technology to take control of that device as and when they see fit. (Note the new Emergency Alert system going live next month to be used to alert the public to 'Environmental Emergencies').
The technology could be used for a whole host of 'reasons': Pollution, Weather, Pandemics and Terrorist Attacks have already been listed. Councils could set individual Geofences for every resident. A low social credit score could mean your geofencing is reduced to say your street or house, whilst a high score could mean your geofence is widened to include all of the city. It should be noted that, in no scenario will smart cities benefit the individual, they are mearly a mechanism for control.
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